World No Tobacco Day is sponsored annually by the World Health Organization to call attention to the global health burden resulting from tobacco use. This year's observance focuses on secondhand smoke and highlights the progress that has been achieved around the world in protecting nonsmokers by making workplaces and public spaces smoke-free.

This year, the World Health Organization (WHO) is encouraging health professionals to provide their patients information about the health consequences of smoking, help their smoking patients quit, and be role models who promote tobacco-free lifestyles.

Tobacco use is one of the chief preventable causes of death in the world. WHO attributes about 5 million deaths a year to tobacco use, a figure expected to rise to about 10 million deaths a year by 2020, with 7 million of these deaths occurring in developing countries.

1922 - Denholm Elliott was born (d. 6 Oct 1992). English actor ( A Room with a View, The Bourne Identity, The Boys from Brazil, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Voyage of the Damned, Trading Places, Scorchers).

1923 - Prince Rainier III of Monaco was born (d. 6 Apr 2005). Head of state: Monaco; married American film star, Grace Kelly.

1941 - Louis J. Ignarro was born. American pharmacologist who, along with Robert F. Furchgott and Ferid Murad, was co-awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery that nitric oxide (NO) acts as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, an entirely new mechanism by which blood vessels in the body relax and widen.

1949 - A crowd of 35,000 people paid tribute to radio personality Mary Margaret McBride at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, (one of the five boroughs that make up New York City). McBride was celebrating her 15th year in radio.

1949 - Tom Berenger [Thomas Michael Moore] was born. Actor: One Life to Live, If Tomorrow Comes, Platoon, Sliver, The Big Chill, Eddie and the Cruisers, Gettysburg, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, A Murder of Crows, In the Company of Spies, Turbulence II: Fear of Flying.

1908 - Hannes (Olof Gösta) Alfvén was born (d. 2 Apr 1995). Swedish astrophysicist, one of the founders of the field of plasma physics (the study of ionized gases) and winner, with Louis Néel of France, of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Physics "for fundamental work in magnetohydrodynamics with fruitful applications in different parts of plasma physics."

1922 - In Washington, D.C., the Lincoln Memorial is dedicated. Daniel Chester French created the famous sculpture of Abraham Lincoln, titled Seated Lincoln. Lincoln is in meditation, seated in a large armchair. Both French and the Piccirilli brothers completed the sculpture. On this day in 1922 the memorial in which the statue is permanently seated was dedicated, although the cornerstone was laid in 1915.